The Viper by Mccarty Monica

Author:Mccarty, Monica [Mccarty, Monica]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780345531476
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-10-18T06:00:00+00:00

Bella sighed with contentment, burrowing deeper into the warm coverlet that smelled of leather and spice. She felt so safe and warm.

The eye that wasn’t resting against the coverlet popped open. Her coverlet was of silk, not of leather, and it smelled of lavender, not spice. And she hadn’t slept with a coverlet and been warm since …

She startled, but his arms tightened immediately around her. Lachlan. Sensing her disorientation, he soothed, “It’s all right, Bella, you’re safe.”

Safe. A wave of relief flooded her, followed immediately by one of gratitude. She was out of prison. It wasn’t a dream. He wasn’t a dream.

She leaned her head back to look up at him. “You came for me.” She hadn’t been awake long enough to form her defenses, and the wonder and emotion rang clearly in her voice. “Not just this time but before also. The rescue. That was you.”

Her heart stabbed at the memory. She remembered looking down into the darkness at the two men racing out of the tower after the explosion had woken her. One of the men had looked up. For a moment she’d known, but then she’d told herself it couldn’t be. He’d betrayed her.

But now she knew differently. He hadn’t knowingly betrayed her. She believed him. Part of her had always known.

His jaw tightened. A strange emotion crossed his face. If she didn’t know him so well, she would think it was pain. “I vowed the moment I saw you being loaded in that cart that I would get you out. I just wish it could have been sooner.”

“What happened that day?” He’d given her a brief explanation, but she wanted to hear it all.

He stiffened. She could see from the hardness of his jaw that the subject was a distasteful one. He looked angry, but she knew it was at himself, not her. “I told you most of it. I was angry and not paying as close attention to my surroundings as I should have been. One of Ross’s men saw me near the docks while I was trying to arrange a birlinn. While I drowned my sorrows in a flagon of the local ale, he had time to warn Ross. They followed me from the alehouse, and once they realized where I was going they surrounded me. I put up a fight, but there were too many of them and the drink dulled my reactions. They knocked me out and put me in manacles. I regained consciousness right before you and the rest of the women walked out of the chapel.”

“Chains,” she said. “That’s what William was trying to tell me. He saw the chains.”

Lachlan nodded. “I tried to go after you. Even managed to slip out of one of my manacles before someone noticed. But Ross was watching me too closely. He had reason not to trust me. We’d had dealings before.”

“You were imprisoned?”

“For a few months.”

“But you managed to escape?”

He nodded. “But by that time you were already imprisoned, and I’d learned Bruce was on his way back to Scotland.

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